Nothing stresses the fact that the American people are locked out and excluded from the political process and political system more than the smugness of politicians who freely lie about facts as elementary as the location of the borders of Israel.

Yet that is exactly what U.S. President Barack Obama has done, repeatedly.

In defense of Israeli aggression Barack Obama has said, “No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”

Everybody knows that the occupied territories lie within the borders of the current state of Israel.

The West Bank and Gaza came under the tutelage of Israel in its 1967 war of expansion. The current state of Israel extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

The explanation for Obama's contemptuous assault on the consciousness of the people is that in the modern world genocidal war cannot be defended or justified. Obama's “argument” is not meant to convince, it is only meant to shock and disturb.

It is hard to imagine a more effective prop for Israeli aggression against the Palestinians than the erratic claim that Israel is defending itself against rocket attacks from a foreign country.

Obama is hiding behind lies and demagogy because the U.S. government has no arguments. As in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, the point of all the propaganda about “terrorists,” “murderers,” “Al Qada,” “fundamentalists,” “extremists,” and “Islamists” etc., is to try to portray the people’s resistance to occupation as the work of a small group. At all costs, the U.S. government wants to hide the fact that the whole Palestinian nation is rising to its feet in struggle against Israeli occupation.

U.S. support for the expansionist and aggressive Israeli state is part of the U.S. strategy to maintain domination of the oil-rich and strategic Middle East.

On the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

On August 6, U.S. President Obama concluded the three day “U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit” in Washington, DC. Along with Barack Obama, former president George W. Bush, Obama’s cabinet members, the heads of state of fifty African countries and business executives from the U.S. and Africa all attended the summit.

In addition to calling for the formation of an “All-African Peace-Keeping Force,” the main focus of the summit was the expansion of “trade and investment” ties between the U.S. and the African Union.

Obama’s proposed “All-African Peace-Keeping Force” is only a thin disguise for stepped-up U.S. military intervention. It is part of U.S. imperialism’s program to turn the clock back to the days of open colonialism in Africa.

According to U.S. officials, the purpose of the military training sessions which would establish the “All-African Peacekeeping Force” is to equip military forces in each country which could be deployed by the United Nations in “crisis” situations. Until a larger “peacekeeping” force could be sent in, this force would be rapidly deployed and used to “stabilize the battle zone.”

Driving the militarist and aggressive foreign policy of U.S. imperialism is the economic program of “globalization” and neo-liberalism. “Globalization” and neo-liberalism is the program through which U.S. monopoly capital and other international monopolies are taking over not only the natural resources but the entire economic infrastructure of countries and demanding that every inch of the globe and every human on the planet be put at their disposal.

Before and during the summit, Obama and the imperialist economists, the hired public relations men of capitalism, deceptively portrayed the export of capital to Africa as the “transfer of technology to the underdeveloped world” and extolled this process as the “motor of economic development.”

The imperialists and their spokesmen even advertised the export of capital, and of finance capital in particular, as a form of “credits” and “aid” for the “poor and backward countries.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. The export of capital is the export of a social relation, the export of the capitalist-imperialist relations of domination and exploitation.

Through its branch plants and its banking networks, U.S. monopoly capital has come to own the land and the resources of the dependent and colonial countries and to exploit the labor of the toiling masses. Rather than being a motor of economic development, the imperialist exploitation is the primary cause of the poverty and backwardness of the colonial and semi-colonial countries.

The famines in Africa, the mass unemployment and misery in Asia, the disintegration in Russia – all this immense human suffering is the direct result of the struggle of U.S. finance capital, of the IMF and other international bankers and monopolies to superexploit the people and plunder the earth.

Today some 3,000 U.S.-based multi-national corporations and financial institutions have overseas investments worth at least $4 trillion. Many of the biggest U.S. monopoly corporations reap between 33% to 50% of their annual profits from foreign investments.

And as U.S. capital spreads throughout the globe, it is accompanied by the armies of the Pentagon. For U.S. imperialism, the political-military expression of “globalization” is “Might Makes Right.”

“Globalization” demands the elimination of any and every barrier to U.S. capitalist penetration and domination of other countries. It demands an end to all restrictions not only on U.S. trade but also especially on the export of U.S. capital and its take-over of the economy of other countries. “Globalization” demands that the state sectors of the economies – in Latin America, in Eastern Europe, in Africa and Asia, be privatized and taken over by foreign monopolies.

“Globalization” demands that the economies of the debtor countries be put under the direct supervision of the U.S. and international bankers, that spending on social welfare be cut to the bone so that the budgets of various countries can guarantee interest payments to the bankers. In short, “globalization” is a program for stepping up the exploitation of the peoples and for bringing the economies of the weaker countries directly under the control of U.S. imperialism.

Thus, U.S. policy-makers rely on NATO as a primary bridge for U.S. influence in Europe, on the forward deployment of U.S. troops in Asia to project U.S. economic interests. So too, U.S. imperialism is keeping the whole of the Middle East militarized and waging a continuous war against Iraq in order to keep its armies in the region and maintain control over this strategic and oil-rich part of the world.

The American people must remain alert to U.S. imperialism's plans in Africa and demand an end to U.S. imperialist interference on the continent.